BBC Learning English

Words in the News

4th May 2009
Disappearing languages

The United Nations cultural agency, UNESCO, says more than a third of the world's six
thousand languages are in danger of extinction. Of those two thousand, it says, about two
hundred are spoken by only a handful of people. Leonardo Rocha reports:

When a language dies, UNESCO says the world loses valuable cultural heritage - a great
deal of the legends, poems and the knowledge gathered by generations is simply lost. In 2008,
Alaska's last native speaker of Eyak died, taking the language with her.

Marie Smith Jones praying in Eyak

Chief Marie Smith Jones, praying here for the survival of the Eyaks. She died at the age of
eighty-nine, campaigning to save her people's heritage.

UNESCO says government action is needed if the world is to preserve its linguistic
diversity. People must be proud to speak their language to ensure it survives.

In the last five years, the governments of Mexico, New Zealand and the United States
managed to reverse the trend locally. But UNESCO says the phenomenon of dying
languages appears in every region and in very diverse economic conditions.

Leonardo Rocha, BBC

Words in the News British Broadcasting Corporation 2009

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Vocabulary and definitions

UNESCO short for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and

Cultural Organization

valuable cultural heritage features belonging to a particular society, such as

traditions, languages, buildings or works of art, which still
exist from the past, are unique and therefore have a
historical importance

a great deal of many, a lot of

legends old stories presented as history but unlikely to be true

native speaker of someone whose first language, or mother tongue, is

campaigning taking action aimed at achieving a goal

to preserve its linguistic to save the great number of languages currently spoken
diversity

to reverse the trend here, to make sure people are encouraged to speak rare
languages, so those languages can survive

More on this story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7225570.stm

Read and listen to the story and the vocabulary online:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2009/04/090504_witn_languages.shtml

Words in the news British Broadcasting Corporation 2009

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